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Making 2D games? GameMaker: Studio is still the best says YoYo Games

Leading the charge from Flash to HTML5

Making 2D games? GameMaker: Studio is still the best says YoYo Games
Dimensionality has been in the news this week.

Autodesk announced it was pushing 3D graphics in mobile games with the release of Maya LT 2014, while Nintendo revealed the 2DS and Unity announced its own 2D toolset.

Sandy Duncan, CEO of YoYo Games, the company behind the original 2D game making package GameMaker: Studio is certainly all for the 2D enduring power of 2D games.

"We're the best 2D engine," he says.

"We welcome Unity's support for 2D games, but GameMaker doesn't carry the overhead of unnecessary 3D technology and is built from the ground up to create 2D games."

Faster pussycat

This underlining strength has been boosted by the recent version 1.2 release.

It's added a new compiler that YoYo Games says can increase CPU tasks by up to 100-times. Cross-platform shader has also been added .

"The new compiler is a huge addition for top-end content," Duncan says. "We're using the LLVM compiler so it's pretty much running at the same speed as Objective-C."

But it's GameMaker: Studio's cross-platform ability to make 2D games that Duncan says remains the package's sweetspot.

"A lot of companies are now moving over their Flash-based games to HTML5 and they're using GameMaker," he says.

These aren't the only developers using the package, however, with indie games such as Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Super Crate Box and Quadropus Rampage created in GameMaker.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.